“Life is about balance. Be kind, but don’t let people abuse you. Trust, but don’t be deceived. Be content, but never stop improving yourself.” —Zig Ziglar

The Trees by Percival Everett is a novel that takes on the history of lynching in the United States of America through the lenses of minority police officers and stereotypical White do-gooders with a healthy dose of satire aimed at the worst leaders that the country has ever had. Everett writes with perfect pacing and surfaces many uncomfortable truths with superb dialogue. This is a book that every American should read....

Laura Vanderkam posted some excellent thoughts on making what little time we have more memorable. Basically, time is elastic. When we decide that we need to do something, we find the time to do it. Other stuff either doesn’t happen, or it takes less time, or it gets punted forward. Much other stuff turns out to be more malleable than we might have imagined. And so, of course, the key to time management is treating the things we want to do with the urgency of the things we need to do....

This article popped into my email newsletter feed this morning and is apropos to something that I was thinking just last Friday as I watched an attempted software release delay and ultimately cause many additional hours of work for developers who should have been preparing for a weekend of relaxation instead. https://world.hey.com/jason/watch-out-for-12-day-weeks-b4441874

“A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires.” —Paulo Coelho, The Fifth Mountain

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” —Anaïs Nin

“Life is a gamble, at terrible odds. If it were a bet you wouldn’t take it.” ―Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

“There’s a world of difference between insisting on someone’s doing something and establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it.” —Fred Rogers, You Are Special

“If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.” —Pema Chodron

“The master is content to serve as an example and not to impose her will.” —Tao Te Ching